Monday, 22 September 2014

Stubai: Monday 1st September: Lauterer See and Bremer to Nurnberger

Overnight I'm in dorm #8 with some mixed US / UK types; its about a 5-person room. Sleep well. Awake about 7 to cries of "Its snowed!" Whilst I can admire their youthful enthusiasm I cannot share it; instead I quietly groan "Oh, great" to myself and sleep in for a bit. That, and the total cloud, precludes anything exciting for the day. I'd half-planned the xfer to the Nurnberger via the Aperer Feuerstein but I think that needs to be revised now (but see Saturday the 6th).

Last night I'd talked to some English-type folks who had done the "klettersteig" from the lake and they said it was easy. So I rather regretted not taking it, and wanted to go have a look so I'd know for the future; a perfect project for a cloudy morning. After a leisurely breakfast I toddled over; its 1 km and takes about half an hour or so each way. GPS track.

Here's a view from the lake back towards the hutte (notice how I'm inconsistent there? I use "hutte", but "lake" instead of "lac" or "see". Well, never mind):

You see the path wending across the slope and heading towards what looks like a rather unpleasant rock band. But in fact its fine; that's where the "klettersteig" is, of course.

Also, since I'm being self-indulgent, here's towards the lake:

As I'm sure you've noticed it was a fairly grey day. Here's my best shot at making the "difficult chimney" look as exciting as possible:

Since it really was a fairly narrow chimney its quite hard to photograph; here is a view looking up, from the start. As you can see, there's piles of ironmongery and you can see that with even more snow, it might be hard to climb or descend.

In fact, that's not the only tricky bit, there's also the "difficult slab". As you see from the below, its not all that difficult, or rather it wouldn't be in good conditions. But in the wet its smooth and slippy, and with a bit more snow (and last year there was lots and lots more snow) you'd have trouble finding the cables. And about 5-10 m to the right is a sharp drop-off, as show in the very top pic.

By 10:40 I'm back in the hutte, and I'm the only guest; everyone else has gone down (various people at breakfast had been talking about going over to the Nurnberger, which was what they actually wanted to do, but one by one they'd talked themselves out of it). The Guardienne looks rather dubious when I tell her I'm going across. I promise myself that I'll turn back if it looks iffy. But, not to build the tension too much, it all turns out to be fine. Before I leave, here's the Bremer in the snow:

And for those interested in ecology-in-action-in-the-mountains, here's a pic of the water waste processing reed beds at the hutte. Last year, while we'd been there, we'd watched with great interest while workmen drilled and then dynamited out some rock near the hutte, in preparation for this. Clearly the reeds haven't had time to grow properly yet.

The crossing to the Nurnberger is 6.4 km, took me 3:55, 500 m up and 600 m down, and I start just before 12. 2 hours to the Joch at 2754. GPS track. Going up to the pass I met a man coming down, and felt faintly disappointed not to be pioneering on the day. But having a fair guarantee that it was passable, and tracks in the snow, was helpful. On the other side I met a few others. Here's me at the Zollhutte at the pass:

Climbing up to the Joch was hot work, so I'm sitting around up there until I got chilly again. After that its down the rocks and the short-cut snow slope quite rapidly to the "Paradise" (view down from the col; view back up towards the col. Perhaps slightly more usefully, view from Nurnberger taken on the 3rd when the cloud was clear; you can just see the Zollhutte on the ridge line). The Paradies is lovely even in the snow, the sinuous line of the river is alluring: